Nearly three hours to the east of one of the noisiest, and sometimes distasteful, college football stadiums in the country, sits a pristine golf course with fairways groomed better than the Autzen Stadium turf.

And at Pronghorn Golf Club in Bend, Ore., 150 miles from Eugene, is where a once-tumultuous and ugly relationship is no longer rooted in disdain.

There is no denying the relationship between UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel and Oregon coach Mike Bellotti began with a southward direction when Neuheisel called a fake punt for his Colorado team despite a 26-point fourth quarter lead over the Ducks.

And, yes, the two emotionally charged, highly competitive I-will-out-think-you personalities clashed a few more times, in very public and unproductive forums, over the years.

Bellotti’s Ducks and Neuheisel’s Bruins meet Saturday in Eugene, and the Oregon faithful are expected to boo and hiss, not to mention do some other unprintable things, toward Neuheisel.

But somewhere within the sprinting water of the Willamette River, which rushes a screen pass away from UCLA’s team hotel, the ill feelings between Bellotti and Neuheisel traveled underneath one of its bridges, to where it stands today.

“We’re actually pretty good friends, more so than people would think,” Bellotti said. “There’s some things we probably don’t agree upon, but overall I think it’s … way blown out of proportion. The longer you know somebody, the more you have a better understanding of things they may do.”

Neuheisel is the self-anointed, and appointed, “villain” in this tale. Although he brings his Bruins to Eugene as a less cocky and wiser, more controlled and humbled head coach, there are reasons for the animosity.

“As I look back at it, I just regret it all,” Neuheisel said. “You can’t talk in those situations and come off as anything else than back-biting. And Mike Bellotti’s a good guy. I have no problem with Mike. I know he wants to win. I want to win.”

When Neuheisel was the coach at Washington, which is Oregon’s bitterest rival, and being investigated by the NCAA, Bellotti wrote a letter to the NCAA. And it wasn’t to turn Neuheisel in, but rather a letter of support.

“I am forever thankful to Mike for being willing to extend himself the way he did, and write a letter on my behalf to the NCAA,” Neuheisel said. “There’s a lot that’s been said between the relationship between myself and Mike, and the acrimony, if you will, but I think that’s all been put in the past.”

However, much of the patchwork in the relationship took place away from the football field, which is where the genesis for an explosively entertaining relationhip was forged.

Neuheisel was 34 when he coached Colorado for the first time. Bellotti was 43 in his first game leading the Ducks, and maturity and decision-making were questions.

As first-year head coaches, their teams met in the 1996 Cotton Bowl, but the Buffaloes’ 38-6 win was upstaged by Neuheisel faking a punt despite being ahead by 26 points.

“It unnerved their fans and created the bad blood,” Neuheisel now says. “I regret doing it.”

“I took exception to it simply that we let it happen,” Bellotti now says.

Three years after the Cotton Bowl, the programs met again, this time in Honolulu. Oregon outgained Colorado in yards 535-397, but the Buffaloes won the Aloha Bowl 51-43. Bellotti went first in the postgame news conference, and talked about the Ducks being the better team, despite losing.

“The fake punt, I know, did not go over well with our staff,” former Oregon athletic director Bill Moos said. “I’m sure that’s something now at their ages, and their experience, wouldn’t happen. The Aloha Bowl and ‘Scoreboard, baby,’ was a little brash, but it brought a lot of color and excitement, and a subplot to our games.”

A few weeks later Neuheisel was named Washington’s coach, and he became an annual target of Ducks fans.

“It was a conflagration of events that created the animosity,” Neuheisel said. “Add the fake punt to ‘Scoreboard, baby,’ and now wearing the Washington hat …”

But it wasn’t long before the relationship turned particularly nasty. With the programs competing for the same recruits, the negative recruiting was ratcheted up.

In 2001, when Oregon was hosting Oregon State, high school players that Washington was recruiting were guests of the Ducks.

During the game-day festivities, a video of Neuheisel played on the scoreboard. After Neuheisel was done speaking, a clip from Airplane was shown.

The scene? A woman vomiting into a bag.

Moos later called several Washington administrators, and Neuheisel, to apologize.

A few months later, Neuheisel, UCLA coach Bob Toledo and Oregon were involved in vicious accusation-laden recruiting campaigns, which resulted in the Pacific-10 Conference reprimanding all three parties.

And then came the polarizing Polaroid of 2002.

Washington pounded the Ducks 42-14 at Autzen Stadium. After speaking with his team in the locker room, the Huskies came back onto the field. The are claims the Huskies stomped up and down on the ‘O’ in the middle of the Autzen Stadium field before taking a team picture with the scoreboard as a backdrop, and Neuheisel was the one who told them to do it.

“I told my players we were going to take picture of the scoreboard so you’ll have it for your desk, for when you’re 40 years old, of how you deal with adversity,” Neuheisel said. “We were having a tough season. We won the game, so we’re trying to go out there, and there is still a lot of media out there. They said we went out and tried to dance on the ‘O.’

“I never told anybody to do that. I just said let’s go and take a picture.”

Before the next chapter could be written, though, Neuheisel was under siege from Washington’s administration and the NCAA. The black-hatted villain, or Darth Vader – both self-described caricatures by Neuheisel – was fired.

“The heated rivalry was more due to the fans than Rick and Mike,” Moos said. “I think there was a mutual respect there, but it adds drama for the fans. I don’t think there’s any bad feelings between those two.”

That is where the public last saw this relationship, but privately, things changed.

Neuheisel became a member of Pronghorn Golf Club, where he occasionally met up with a certain Oregon Ducks football coach.

“In each of the last five summers we got to play a little golf,” Neuheisel said. “We wear white and black hats on the game days. That’s all.”